Undaunted by Disaster : Pasadena Glen’s Fires and Floods Are Seen as Cost of <i> Really </i> Living

During 27 years of disasters, Stevan Young has been dragged through the mud.

Literally.

The 36-year-old Pasadena Glen resident lost his home--as well as the house he grew up in--to last year’s fires. He’s been through three major mudslides, one so forceful that it swept his truck--with him in it--half a mile down the canyon and stripped off his clothes.

People in safer neighborhoods look at the disasters that historically befall the Glen and say, “What kind of person would live in a place like that?”

Stevan Young is the ultimate answer.

As spring came to the Glen months after the Oct. 27 fire, Young, a construction worker, relaxed in the orange seats of the trailer he lives in as he waits to rebuild. He cranked up a Bruce Springsteen CD, unperturbed by the rain outside that threatened new floods.

Disasters of epic magnitude are a trade-off for living in what Young calls a sanctuary from the urban jungle.

“You love it for what it is,” he said. “You take what it throws back at you, but you love it for what it is.”

With the resiliency of a Glen rat, Young has braved one catastrophe after another for the privilege of living here.

“I love hearing the birdcalls. I love seeing the raccoons go by in a line with pups behind them,” Young said recently. “Just two mornings ago, there was a buck, doe and fawn. And listening to the creek is so soothing. It’s the kind of community where you know most of the people. You don’t find that kind of camaraderie in the city.”

Born in Pasadena, Young moved to the Glen in 1967 with his parents and brother. He remembers riding Schwinn bikes, climbing trees and “playing with snakes and spiders.”

His first flood came soon after. In 1969, an almost biblical rain pounded the Glen for a week straight. When the water burst loose, Young said, “we could hear the rumbling, and we could see cars rolling down like surfboards.”

In 1980, another flood hit, on Feb. 14, a furious Valentine’s Day greeting. Young was returning from a party at 2 a.m. Noting signs of trouble, he rushed up the road to warn his family and neighbors.

He reached them in time, but as he turned to leave, the crashing mud overtook him, flipping his truck and throwing him out the back window.

“The very first thing I said when it rolled me over was, ‘This is finally it, I’m dead,’ ” he said. “The last thing I remember is holding onto the back bumper. Every time it went over a check dam, it would pole-vault me over the front, and I’d grab again as the truck went by. But, once, I missed. So then I grabbed onto a boulder.”

Neighbors fished Young out as he neared the bottom of the canyon. His clothes, except for a belt and belt loops, had been ripped entirely off. The skin was torn off his knees, his teeth were chipped, and his head was gashed.

When the Altadena firestorm struck before dawn on Oct. 27, Young rushed from his own place in the middle of the Glen to fight the fire, which was threatening his parents’ house at the top of the canyon--the home he grew up in.

Windows were exploding like mortar fire, he said. Even with his shirt pulled over his head for protection, he could see the hail of red embers surrounding him.

“It was like being in a blizzard,” he said. “The fireball went right by me. . . . I watched it jump across the canyon like an arm. The whole side of the canyon went up in flame like a great big newspaper.”

When the flames ignited the house next door, Young decided it was time to escape. But when he sprinted down the road to his own home, he found the pines next door ablaze. The fire had eaten so much oxygen from the air that his truck would barely start.

His parents’ house burned to the ground, as did Young’s own. Now withered trees that used to shade the street hang listlessly over the muddy road. Flights of stairs climb to nowhere.

Although he was house-sitting in Sierra Madre when February’s flood struck, he returned to shoot videotape of the raging creek from the very spot where he had been swept away 14 years earlier.

About two months ago, Young came back to stay--at first in a camping tent and then in a trailer--despite the onset of spring storms.

Like many of his neighbors, Young plans to rebuild. More than 30 homeowners affected by the Altadena fire have applied for building permits to repair partially or completely damaged houses. About half have been granted permits, including one resident of the Glen.

Other Glen residents hope to apply for building permits soon, said Linda Williams, president of the Pasadena Glen Improvement Assn. On April 12, the association reached an agreement with the county on conditions for rebuilding, including improved flood control measures, turnouts on the road to accommodate emergency vehicles and the clearing of fire-prone vegetation.

Despite the burns and bruises of the past 27 years, Young never considered leaving.

“What are you going to do, find someplace better?” he asked. “Well, there is no place better. This is the best there is.”